


The Art of Losing a Radioactive Spider

by RookieReporterZ



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Cinnamon Roll Peter Parker, Gen, Hurt Peter Parker, I Made Myself Cry, I Tried, Kid Peter Parker, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter Parker is a Mess, Pre-Spider-Man: Homecoming, Precious Peter Parker, Protective May Parker (Spider-Man), Protective Tony Stark, Spiders are Creepy Crawly Death Dealers!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-04 16:38:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20474198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RookieReporterZ/pseuds/RookieReporterZ
Summary: - His life was falling to pieces. No, he was not embellishing this horror that was his life. He was not moping. Or lying to himself.He was simply having a horrible day, and there was nothing that anyone could do about it. -We know Spider-Man's origin but what if Stark Industries created ‘The Spider’ in the MCU, not Oscorp? Or Peter is overdramatic, adorable and having a bad day and Tony literally lost a million-dollar project after handing it to someone who was clearly not him.





	The Art of Losing a Radioactive Spider

**Author's Note:**

> Hey Marvel Cinematic Universes Fanatics! We know Spider-Man's origin but what if Stark Industries created ‘The Spider’ in the MCU, not Oscorp? Inspired by a CBR video that brought up annoying good points! And yes, I did change stuff for plot convenience. 
> 
> No Cinnamon Rolls were harmed in this fanfiction, including Peter Parker and the Cinnamon Rolls he eats.
> 
> Thank you so much for giving this sad trash a chance!

“Mr Stark!”

The addressed man sighed deeply and swivelled his chair around to reach the voice of an annoying employee.

Tony was used to many things. 

He was used to nosy reporters who liked to pry into the company's business. He was used to the various degrees of both insults and compliments being thrown his way. 

Most of all, he was used to being interrupted. 

A lot.

Tony, however, was not used to being confused.

Why would someone need to come to him?

Pepper was the one to go to if there was an issue. Most of the workers and researchers would still ring her. Even if she hadn’t been here, next to Tony, for the last few days, it almost felt like she was here, safe, running the company. To everyone except for Tony that was.

If a person was coming to him for help, that meant it was big. Big enough that even if he tried to help, he wouldn’t or couldn't make anything worse by helping as he usually did.

Tony blew out a breath.

He really couldn’t deal with this today. Pepper was still at a conference in Tokyo as she had been for the last week. As much as Tony had started off strong at her absence, his resolve had started to crumble. 

He missed her. Like, really missed her. 

And her absence, as always, hurt more than words could say.

Focusing on the task at hand, or person, he tipped his signature sunnies down his nose, eyeing the man with annoyed eyes before taking them off and slouching down on his desk chair.

“What d’ya want, Travers?” His slow drawl showed mild annoyance about being interrupted from his ‘tinkering’. “Can’t you see that I’m busy?”

Travers, one of his head scientists (did he work in the sustainable energy department?), glanced sceptically down at the jumble of screws, pipes and wires on his desk. 

“Of course, Mr. Stark. I came to break some rather unfortunate news. There has been an issue down at the Genetic Modification Labs.”

Ahh, so that's where he worked.

Tony frowned. Had he interrupted his very important - it was definitely important! - work for this?

“Can’t you just ring up Potts? I’m sure she’ll be happy to help with your stuff.” 

Even if she can’t find the time to ring me, he thought bitterly.

Tony waved dismissively at the scientist, going back to his work. 

He had expected to hear the door shut at any minute. When it didn’t come, Tony looked up at him, who instead of moving away, moved closer to the desk!

The nerve!

He looked in horror as Travers picked up a length of wire that he had been toying with, almost slipping through his fingers and dropping unceremoniously onto the desk. Luckily, Tony caught it at the last minute and brought it closer to himself for safekeeping.

“Look Butter-fingers,” Tony started, “I don’t know if you have a point to prove by comin’ in and having a go at me-!”

“I was doing nothing of the sort!” There Travers was, interrupting again. Seriously, how did Pepper deal with these people? It was part of the reason Tony gave her the position of CEO.

People were annoying.

“I was doing nothing of the sort, Mr. Stark,” he repeated, seemingly nervous, twisting his fingers around. ”I was simply informing you that something regrettable has happened to the project.”

Which project? There were many projects, most of which he worked on.

This must’ve been one of the Projects that he had handed over. Travers, sensing his confusion, elaborated.

“Project 1347,” he sighed rubbing his head with his right hand. Tony’s even more perplexed look showed that his answer made even less sense.

“The Spider Genetic Modification.”

The project that he’d given to Professor Lennon two months ago, rather reluctantly, he must say. That was quite interesting and being the ‘founder’ and ‘oversee-er’ of the project, he found that it piqued his usually picky interest. 

He had even put extra funding into that one, an extra million to keep the good work coming.

“Yeah, I enjoyed that one, how’re the results going?”

“You see-”

Uh oh, ‘you see...’ was never a good way to start a sentence. From past experience, Tony could say that a sentence starting with ‘You see’ would, more often than not, have someone grovelling for their job within the next few sentences.

Travers paused, trying to find the right way to put it.

“Spit it out, Travers!” He was impatient now.

“We lost it!”

Tony stopped short, “What do you mean you lost it?”

“I mean, the spider that we were putting all of the money into and modifying wasn’t locked up in its containment cell. It escaped. It’s probably out of the building by now. It won’t last long out there.”

He has got to be kidding, right?

He never knew Travers actually possessed a sense of humour.

Tony laughed. 

“Travers, I never knew you were funny! A project that cost millions of dollars, gone?! Ahh..! Great joke!”

Travers joined in the laughter and giggled nervously.

“Well, the fact that we are laughing about it doesn’t change the fact that the spider is lost.”

That sobered Tony up.

So, it was lost. Like, actually lost. 

Millions of dollars, probably crawling around the sewers of Manhattan, out to some unknown place in New York?

Shit.

His company, or Pepper’s, had just wasted millions of dollars on a spider. He didn't even like spiders!

“So what you are trying to say,” he paused collecting his temper, “is that you lost a million-dollar, revolutionary project. And this was because one of you incompetent morons forgot to lock the spider in its ‘itsy bitsy’ cage?!” 

He could feel his face turning red with rage. Travers was shrinking back now. 

Good.

Tony stood up and walked to the other side of his desk, poking Travers in his chest and pulling him up. 

“Here’s what’s gonna happen,” he said, his voice dangerously calm as he led him to the door of his office. “You’re gonna search the floors of this tower and the labs from top to bottom until you find that wretched spider in whatever shit-hole it’s hiding in.”

He took a deep breath, the air coming out staggered with anger.

“If you haven’t found it, ALIVE, by the end of the day, the entire team working on the project will be transferred to work in the cleaning facility for the rest of the miserable year.”

Tony stuck his head directly in the man's line of vision, pushing Travers one step further back and, finally, out of his office.

“Are we clear?”

“Yes,” the man squeaked.

One last thing.

“Could you also let Lennon know that both you and him are, what’s the correct terminology, being fired?”

“Of cour- Wait! Me?! What did I-?! Mr. Sta-!”

Tony shut the door and made his way back to his desk.

Pepper was going to be unbelievably pissed when she got back.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, he muttered obscene curses that he had yet to release into the world.

There was no doubt about it, Tony Stark was having a crap day.

___________________________________

Peter Parker was having a crap day.

Everyone’s had them before, at least that's what Peter assumed. 

You know Those Days™. Yes, they have a name.

The days when you suddenly get up and the world seems to turn against you? 

When everything bad that could happen to humanity is thrust upon you? 

Yeah. 

That type of day.

The one that brought along a pounding headache.

It felt like all otherworldly beings came together and universally agreed, ‘Let’s give this kid hell!’

No, he was not exaggerating like Aunt May proclaimed when he had stated this over breakfast. And neither was he “Okay” with it as Ned had replied at school. 

First, he had woken up late for school, forgoing his usual routine of trying and failing to get out of eating breakfast. 

Then, as he passed the junkyard, the scraps of wires that he had his eye on for his new attempt to create, or re-create, a computer had disappeared.

By the time he had finally gotten close to school, it had started raining and Peter was stuck walking without an umbrella. 

And he was late. 

Again.

To top off all of the hell that he had endured during the day, he hadn’t zipped up his backpack properly. 

All of his homework for his new physics class caught a draft of wind from the upstairs maths classroom where he resided and floated neatly out to the window and into a pile of mud outside that had appeared due to the aforementioned rain. 

3 hours of homework out the window. Quite literally.

As a result of this, his stomach was growling rather dangerously, he had no project to distract himself from his schoolwork, he was wet and now he had detention after school with Coach Wilson, whom all of the teachers pawned off their detentionees to, making them undergo physical exercise. Cue the shudder.

His life was falling to pieces.

No, he was not embellishing this horror that was his life. It was, unfortunately, no hyperbole. He was not moping. Or lying to himself.

He was simply having a horrible day, and there was nothing that anyone or anything could do about it.

“Mr Parker! Quit moping and focus on Page 73!” A nasally sharp voice cut his moping - he was not moping! - short and redirected Peter’s attention to his biology textbook. 

Biology was a particular nuisance today. His usual teacher, Mrs Hershmann, was in the middle of her Biannual research holiday over in Brazil, studying the interactions between the native ocelots and introduced colony of monkeys from Mexico.

He had no idea how his school found these teachers.

Unfortunately, this also meant that his class was in the presence of an angry, irritable and clearly pissed substitute teacher, who had the attempted no-nonsense look of a gorilla constantly pasted onto his face.

Where was he? Ahh... the not-moping. He was very good at doing that…

“Mr Parker!” He could not catch a break today. Regrettably, the balding teacher could see the distinct lack of reading that he was doing. “Since you have been staring at the first page for such a long time, surely you can recite the first paragraph by now!”

“Mr Carter-”

“That was not a request.”

Peter stifled a groan and let his memory flash back to the minuscule glance that he had at the page. Most of his classmates called him a huge nerd anyway, he really didn’t need to display his photographic memory any more than necessary. 

“Well? Get on with it boy! Clearly, if you have decided you are above this lecture, you know all of this topic already! Why don’t you show us what we have been missing out on.”

The loud demanding sharpened the already intense throbbing of his head and he began reciting.

“The genetic modification of a creatures Deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA involves-”

As he recalled the facts, word for word much to his teachers despair, Mr. Carter’s face turned increasingly redder. With anger or frustration, he wasn’t sure, he really couldn’t let himself be on the receiving end of it today.

After he finished the paragraph, Mr Carter grunted something that sounded suspiciously like ‘know-it-all’ and stalked off to the front of the room.

Multiple eyes were on him now as he shrunk down into his jacket, avoiding stares.

He sighed.

Just the way to make himself scarce in a class of 40 students. And Flash.

Great job, Peter.

Truly well done.

The rest of the class passed in a blur and suddenly, it was lunch time.

The cafeteria was far too cheerful for his mood to comprehend.

Busy students chatting and gossiping, trying to overload his brain with a jumble of noise. Talking about crushes and make-up and sport and whatever the hell normal teenagers conversed about.

Ugh. Social interaction.

Even the thought of it made him glad that he had unintentionally skipped breakfast.

He blended his way into the crowd, searching for the familiar mop of black hair and cubby grin.

Which ended up materialising behind him.

“Man, you don’t look great today!”

“Gee, thanks Ned,” he sarcastically rehorted, “I don’t feel so good, either.”

Turning around, he saw the worried eyebrow raise that his friend offered.

”Maybe you should go home, call in sick or something.”

Peter gave looked at him incredulously.

”Don't you understand? May will kill me if I come home early! I don't know what would be worse. Neglected and locked up in my room or being smothered to death by blankets!”

”If those blankets are accompanied by hot chocolate and her special cinnamon rolls, I definitely know which one I would prefer to be the end of me.”

As he continued talking, he found something out.

Turns out, social interaction didn't repulse him as much when it was with someone that was as mentally unstable as himself.

By the time the day of horror ended (and after talking to Ned), he was not as depressed as before, but still ready to cry himself to sleep in a bundle of blankets until the end of the universe. 

He would never see the light of day again! 

He could just live in bed. Those grandparents in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory did it, so why couldn’t he?

That wasn’t too dramatic, was it?

Nah, he deserved it after today.

His school troubles were slowly slipping further and further away as he approached his usual route home. The routine grounded him, giving him purpose.

Walking back, he nudged a rock on the sidewalk.

Lucky rock. It didn’t have to deal with feelings or emotions. It didn’t have any responsibilities to fulfill.

Taking out his frustrations on a rock was probably not the most mature thing to do, but he was feeling slightly less forgiving today. 

Plus, the rock looked lonely on the footpath.

In one aggressive kick, the rock rolled into the gutter.

Just before splashing Peter’s shoes with puddle mud.

Perfect.

Aggravated, frustrated and worst of all, wet, he slumped down onto the curb. 

He felt childish and horrible, so it couldn’t really get any worse from here and he might as well make himself feel a little better.

He started sobbing. Violently. 

Shaking, holding his knees together and hugging himself, he sat. 

Broken. 

No one would come to get him. He was just Peter, plain old Peter Parker who only had one true friend in the entire world.

A nerd.

A loner.

A know it all.

Just an average teenager who had no idea how to act like one.

No parents, no uncle.

He was Peter Parker and he was…

Unexceptional.

The river of emotions spilled around him until he was nothing but an empty shell.

Heart wrenching noises seemed to wrench something else out of the gutter as well.

A spider, an unusual looking spider but something living.

Red and white stripes decorated its body, embroidering the bleak features with colour and vibrancy.

Maybe the spider needed a home as well. Or maybe it just needed someone to talk to. Just like him.

He was alone, shadowed by an alleyway. No one else would know. 

What the hell.

“Hey Spidey!” He crooned and sniffled, wiping away the tears on his sleeve, “Can I call you Spidey? I love spiders. How has your day been? I bet the world didn’t like you that much. It doesn’t like me that much either today!”

He laughed dryly. 

“I wish, things like you could feel accepted, you know?! I wish I was accepted,” he sighed.

“I know what your going through, you can talk to me? Like, I know you can’t actually talk but, I’m here for you! The problems of a spider can’t be too hard to deal with right?”

The spider cocked its head sideways like a puppy, questioningly. It didn’t seem to trust him.

“Here, I’ll give you a proper introduction. I’m Peter Parker, science and engineering prodigy!”

Feeling a little bit braver and less shaky, he stuck out his index finger like a handshake.

For a moment, the spider stood warily, its front legs swaying in front of its body in a defensive position. Then, it scuttled a bit closer and stuck out its front legs onto Peter’s finger in a sign of greeting.

At least he had one thing that could look after him.

The spider leapt up onto his finger and crawled onto his arm. 

Peter suddenly had doubts about the arachnids pure intentions. 

He knew what was going to happen before it did. At this point, he figured it couldn't get any worse.

It did.

As the pincers sunk into him, pain took hold of him, pushing him in and out of reality and the real world. 

The line between awake and unconscious drifted in and out of sight before enticing everything with a blurry outlook. It was him against the world, down in a dark sidewalk and collapsed onto the grimy pavers.

He knew, though.

He would be fine.

Peter Parker had dealt with pain before in his life.

He could deal with a little more.

___________________________________

Tony watched the scene from the camera installed within the spider, feeling immensely guilty. Some poor teenager was going to cop the brunt of his problems, his mistakes. 

Tony vowed never to let anyone take care of his mistakes again.

As the image fizzled out, he caught one last look at the image. A small boy, curled up on a bleak sidewalk, convulsing with pain and agitation. 

The boy seemed strong, he would get through it. At least he hoped.

Anyway, his Guardian would be there soon, May Reilly Parker Jameson seemed like a kind lady when he had disclosed Peters location anonymously. 

He could see potential in the kid. Needless to say, Tony would be taking an unusual amount of interest in this young boy.

He would wait.

Something told him that he would be seeing a lot more of Peter Parker in the near future...

**Author's Note:**

> Sooo… What did you think? For the moment, it’s a one-shot but if anyone has any requests or wants to see more, I can make a second instalment? I don’t want to end with sadness! And I have a really sad amount of time on my hands.
> 
> Please help my sanity by commenting and ’liking’ below because human interaction will help me to feel more like a person!


End file.
